Vietnam
I'm watching Rambo 2 and he has to go to Vietnam to find some PoWs. there was this guy in the army organising the search and he said 'it has nothing to do with me, I'm just here to clean up the mess'.
I was wondering how do most Americans view the Vietnam War and it's embarassing end? I heard that the soldiers were spat at on their return and that it was considered a failure. How is it viewed in the reasons for it, carrying out of it and the subsequent withdrawl without achieving it's goal? |
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I personally consider it a waste of life. But other than that I have no official opinion due to my lack of sufficient information and knowledge on said subject.
See? I can make Government statements too. |
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Going purely with popular media (which is all id have access to) id say that it is viewed predominantly as an american tragedy, the deaths or suffering as portrayed in various cinema is predominantly if not wholeheardly american oriented. You could say this is entirely reasonable since it is american cinema but its still avoiding the essential wrongness of what happened.
The reaction is similar to the russians ignoring what soviet occuaption meant to the baltic republics after WWII (in light of recent celebrations). The events, the history is remembered in terms of 'personal suffering'. |
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I'm pretty interested in American history and at somepoint I want to read indepth about it, but until I really don't know how I feel. Obviously it was a failure, but the US is not a monolith and it's a complex issue with many sides.
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They just shouldnt have let the media come along.. thats all..
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My university degree is in English and history. Five percent of my whole university studies were centered around Vietnam, but I just don't have any desire to discuss that war. My professor had a very different outlook on the whole thing and gave me the worst possible grade he could give me without expecting me to complain to the university administration.
I have already been called an idiot on this forum because of my views on the conflict. I'm not really interested in sharing what I have learned with the brainwashed masses of the western world. Sorry. |
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Even after Tet you would have noticed that very few images contained graphic content - almost invariably the televised images were of helicopters landing, troops entering into the dense jungle, and distant explosions. There are various reasons for this, the simpliest of which is that at the time Television Camera's and equipment were heavy, you couldnt take one into the jungle (where much of the combat took place), and you certainly couldnt shoot film at night (when most of the combat took place). The argument is a good deal more complex, but the general gist is that the impact of the media on public opinion and the consequent collapse of popular support for the war is often overstated and poorly understood. Don't believe everything you read in your highschool history textbooks. |
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Maybe it isn't GD, the brainwashed western world and your university professor. Maybe its you. |
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you'd make a good creationist. |
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as this thread started with Rambo, I thought I'd paste this :)
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The question for media analysts is what type of information was broadcast to the American public. How much of this information was 'graphic' and did it portray a graphic reality or an idealised/uninformitive picture? |
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the denial of free discourse is so often ascociated with fanatics ... |
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America would have won Vietnam. It didnt lose because of its lack of manpower or firepower. It faced a war of attrition. It was killing hundreds times more vietnamese for every american lost. However wars of attrition are not the best idea in democracies.
The Tet offensive basically put the nail in the coffin of the vietnam campaign. Even though it was a complete disaster for the vietnamese relied on figures claiming that pretty much all of the south would 'rise up' in popular protest and join the northern vietnamese peoples army to rid vietnam of the americans and capitalism (retards); it was a hugely successful publicity stunt. IT in effect ended any support at home for the Vietnam war and as such the President (Nixon) got into office promising a 'secret plan to get out of nam' |
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I would go into more detail about it but its 2:33 AM and im tired. maybe in the morning....
Thers a fair few "funny" stories about Tet, Khe Sanh and the ho chi minh trail. |
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Again (as in the iraq thread) what do you mean by win? If you're having to kill vast numbers of a population to get them to live they way you want them to live it isn't exactly 'liberation'. The rest of the planet could invade the US and kill anyone who didn't take up socialism, we could kill those that opposed us in greater numbers than they could kill us. Trying to square that killing with 'hey lol freedom lol' is a bit nonsensical. Britain could have put in more resources and won that triffle colonial war we faught all those moons ago. |
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we decided not to was that decision cowardiss? was it brilliant? who knows. we just kept people alive |
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Back on topic, I think Vietnam was simply poorly fought and over regulated. Not to mention it supported a corrupt, shitty, dictatorial government that didn't even have the support of many of it's own citizens. If we would have done things like bomb dams and dikes in the North to ruin their food supply (g0t r!ce?) we would have won. |
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In war there are no winners.
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[quote=Nusselt]Again (as in the iraq thread) what do you mean by win? If you're having to kill vast numbers of a population to get them to live they way you want them to live it isn't exactly 'liberation'. [/quuote]
That's what Ho Chi Minh did as well and liberation is what he called it. Quote:
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Viet Nam really started to heat up in the middle of 1965. I had just finished high school and had registered for the draft in September. I wasn't happy about this. But I also wasn't worried as I had a student deferment. I never had to serve as I was found unfit for service due to asthma. My heart was not broken. It was people my age who were starting to get called up for duty. However, though I came from an economicly disadvantaged segment of society, almost none of my friends were drafted. I didn't have any friends or close aquaintances who perished in Viet Nam. More died from traffic accidents and drug over doses than war. I was not particularly against the war. I was not particularly in favor of the war. Most of those individuals who I encountered who were against the war were actually only against the draft. If there had been no draft, there wouldn't have been a great outcry against the war, from my perspective. I view the war, at this time in my life, as instructive. At the time, I viewed it as annoying. I disliked protesters more than I disliked the government or the military. It was kids like me that were baring the brunt of the war, from the American side. I didn't care about the Viet Namese side and still don't. Although I wasn't in the military, I was outraged, and continue to be, about the behavior of those who spat upon the troops, most of whom didn't want to be in a war. The war wasn't there fault. I didn't have any respect for those who fled to Canada to avoid the draft as most of them were not doing it out of principals regarding war but out of self interest, or so it seemed to me from those I knew. At the time, the war was seen as standing up to Communism and many people felt that Commuinist govenments were evil. The domino theory, which I thought stupid, was not thought stupid by most. However, it must be remembered that in the past 20 years in 1965, the Russians (Joseph Stalin) had subjugated pretty much all of eastern Europe. Mao had taken over China and North Korea was Communist. The French were defeated and pulled out and North Viet Nam was Communist. In 1960 Cuba went Communist. Kruschev was bragging that Communism would bury us. The governments in Laos, Cambodia and South Viet Nam were embattled by Communist insurgencies. Central America, Angola and other areas were considered at risk. The USSR had blockaded Berlin and tried to take it over by starving the allies out. All of this was taking place in the after math of the Second World War. A war which was viewed by Americans of my father's generation as being caused, in large part by the weakness of the French and British leaders and their appeasement of Hitler. With this as a background, it was felt by many that if a strong stand wasn't taken against the Communist dictatorships, there were no Communist democracys, we would be isolated and defeated eventually. This was a very real concern felt by many, many people in America. The view of the way the war was conducted was that the military was hamstrung by the politicians who weren't willing to go all out to win. In reality, no one wanted to start a war with the Chinese which we couldn't win without using nukes. As to withdrawing without achieving our goals, it was viewed by most as a failure though most people couldn't tell you what our aims were. I am not sure myself whether or no we achieved our actual goals. The goals may have been much more subtle and convoluted than I know. I think that the worst of the long term effects of the Viet Nam war are two. 1. The spreading of the philosophy which is evident in today's world that western democracys will do not have the nerve or resolve to stand up for their beliefs for any extended period of time so long as it can be made costly. The Spanish may be the poster children for this. 2. The marginalization of the Democratic party in the US. The Democratic party was taken over by the anti-Viet Nam War wing. Rightly or wrongly the Democrats moved more and more toward being the party of the disaffected and the negative. When I was young, the Democrats were the positive party with ideas in the areas of social legislation and civil rights which seemed good and positive. They became the group against the war. Against this and against that. It has allowed the Republicans to take the optomistic ground, this has ALWAYS turned out to be the best ground to take in American politics. Americans easily tire of being told what is wrong with them and that things are going to hell. At any rate those are my personal views. |
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By "win" i mean destroying any remaning remenants of the North Vietnamese army and all those who took up arms to support it. America knew it was playing a numbers game when it first entered vietnam. It had to 'stem the tide' by killing more than the north was able to recruit. I cant remember the exact date but it did actually accomplish this. More people were killed every day than it was possible to recruit :. numbers of resistance were graudally decreasing. Its just that your not 'winning' land or 'victories' per se. Your winning a war of attrition and nobody likes even being in one of those. The americans also underestimated the cost that the north was willing to accept. They believed that if they inflicted massive casualties theyd give up and go home. They didnt. |
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Now who, mr dda, who do you think gave, and continued to give for years, the Communists all the training and weapons to get rid of the Japanese, set up the Communist state, and then drive back the French? (hint: it wasnt other communists) |
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I meant philosophically. The US didn't like communism and thought its way of life was better, it wanted to tell the people of vietnam this. In order for them to agree, anyone who disagreed had to be killed. Lemme put it another way, the soviet union could have killed every other man woman and goat in afghanistan that rejected them and made it part of the evul empire. They would have 'won'. My problem with vietnam is that people continually project the idea that america could have stayed the course, killed anyone who didn't like the american way of life and the people of vietnam would have been eternally grateful. If you have to kill hundred of thousands of people inorder to stop them rejecting the way in which you say they should live their life, it isn't freedom or liberation or better. You are the oppressor. For what its worth i also think the US could have stayed and killed anyone who didn't agree, doing so however would have been against the core principles of why the United States was formed in the first place. |
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I don't really understand what you mean by marginalization of the Democratic Party. I gather that Republicans have ruled longer than the Deomocrats, but if Clinton hadn't been so stupid and they hadn't picked someone who had all the charm of a corpse they probably would have beaten Bush in 2000.[/quote] Weakened to the point that their power in American politics is marginal. It is not that Republicans have ruled longer, it is that the Democrats who have succeeded at all have had to move much more to the right as a whole. There are still some areas which hold out, notably California and New York. However, even there, the causes which were once championed by the Democrats are increasingly falling into disfavor because of an effective voice. |
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It could be argued that the resulting interferrence did Italy good in the long run and therefore it could be justified in that manner. But when compared to the problems caused by the US interferring in other countries, is it worth messing up a whole load of coutries on the off-chance that one or two may be better off in the long-run (a scenario that cannot be accuratly predicted anyway)? |
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